When someone who has found fame dies young, it creates a mystique of legendary proportions.Â Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all belong to a rather exclusive group of musicians and singers who died at 27.

When they died, their fans, deep in mourning, wondered what they would have done next.

The term “27 Club” was first used in Rolling Stone magazine after the death of Jim Morrison in 1971 after Jones, Hendrix and Joplin had all died within a span of a little over the two previous years. Â Read more »

The last time I thought about taking heroin was yesterday. I had received â€˜an inconvenient truthâ€™ from a beautiful woman. It wasnâ€™t about climate change (Iâ€™m not that ecologically switched on). She told me she was pregnant and it wasnâ€™t mine.
I had to take immediate action. I put Morrissey on in my car and as I wound my way through the neurotic Hollywood hills my misery burgeoned. Soon I could no longer see where I ended and the pain began. So now I had a choice.

I cannot accurately convey to you the efficiency of heroin in neutralising pain. It transforms a tight white fist into a gentle brown wave, and from my first inhalation 15 years ago it fumigated my private hell. A bathroom floor in Hackney embraced me like a womb, and now whenever I am dislodged from comfort my focus falls there.

It is ten years since I used drugs or drank alcohol and my life has immeasurably improved. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and generally a bright outlook.Â Read more »

The HoS are so up themselves. They claim they “broke” the folic acid story. What a load of crap, this story has been on soft boil for months, ever since Annette King foisted the decision on us by signing up to it as a dying act by a dying government.

Anyway this non-story about Rodney Hide being “shocked” to learn about the Folic Acid issue and warning Kate Wilkinson has a brilliant quote at the end and provides us all with the best reason to ditch the silly nanny state mass-mediction issue once and for all.

Last week Hide said New Zealand had rejected “the nanny state” in the last election.

“It seems to me the only argument in favour of it is we might upset the Australians which I thought was a plus.”

Unlike the pinko DPF I think the Auckland Transitional Authority are stark, raving bonkers having Laila Harre as the cat in charge of the canaries. It isn’t a smart move it is in fact dumb.

Perhaps Rodney Hide might like to consider his speech in 2000 when Labour and the Alliance were foisted the Employment Relations Act upon us all.

Taken from Hansard

RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ): I do have some questions and the Chairman knows that I have been seeking the call every time with Mr Willie Jackson.

I have been a bit disappointed that the Labour Government members have not been prepared to take the call and speak, particularly the members, and we have had only Willie Jackson. I hope that Willie Jackson will take a call. He made the point that when he was a union leader, so-called, when workers went out on strike he would take no pay.

My question to Willie Jackson is when workers go out on strike now because of this legislation, will he, as an MP, take no pay? Would he be prepared to live his principles while he is a parliamentarian? What we are seeing with Part 8 is the return of the strike as a lethal weapon into industrial relations in New Zealand. I think it is fitting that the Associate Minister of Labour, Laila Harré, should be in the chair because we well know her views. This is the woman who said to the Labour Party in 1987 that Joseph Stalin achieved more in 20 years than the West achieved in 200 years. This woman has never recanted from that view — not once. She has never said that what she thought of Stalin achieving in 20 years what the West achieved in 200 years was wrong. She still believes it to this day, and here she is seeing this legislation, inspired by Karl Marx, as I said in my earlier speech, being inflicted –

(The Chairman follows)

RODNEY HIDE: I am sure, and I certainly did not. I was just reporting that Laila Harré said that Stalin achieved in 20 years what it took the West 200 years to achieve. It is in the Evening Post. I can bring down her quotation, she has never denied it, and I have brought it up in question time before. I was also pointing out, and I said it in my speech, that this whole idea of bargaining and inequality comes from Karl Marx. The Chairman can read the books and he will understand. There is nothing unparliamentary about being a wee bit historical about where these crazy, mad ideas are coming from that this Government is inflicting on New Zealanders.

[Interruption]

They would have learnt because that was 150 years ago. What we are having here is the return of the lethal strike to the New Zealand workplace. The ACT party is again having a mini-caucus and I am very interested in the comments made by Sue Kedgley on her amendment. I am hoping that Sue Kedgley will take a call to help us and explain the full ramification of her amendment that she has proposed here today because she read out that it covers a mammal, a bird, and essential services. I think that Ms Kedgley said that 3 days’ notice has to be given if it will affect essential services. What we are concerned with here is a mammal; a bird; a reptile; an amphibian; for those on the Government side, that means frogs; a fish, bony or cartilaginous; any octopus, squid, crab, lobster, or crayfish. The member asked what about cockroaches.

Hon. Maurice Williamson: What about Labour Party members?

RODNEY HIDE: I do not know about the Labour Party members. It means any other member of the animal kingdom that is declared from time to time by the Governor-General by Order in Council to be an animal for the purposes of this Act. So I guess that it would be up to the Governor-General to pick up cockroaches.

That’s right….Laila Harre thinks that Stalin achieved more in 20 years than the West took 200 years to achieve. She said that in 1987 in the Evening Post. And to my knowledge she has never resiled from that position.

This is going to end in tears, and Mark Ford will be the one we can blame for this silliness.

Brian Rudman provides a refreshing view of the silly calls for a referendum on the Super City.

Every time I hear someone advocating a referendum I cringe. Surely the $9 million anti-smacking charade is evidence enough that asking the great unwashed to say yes or no to a complex, many-faceted conundrum is a dumb way to go.

In recent weeks we’ve had Labour leader Phil Goff demanding a referendum on the Auckland Super City, and now Labour’s Auckland issues spokesman, Phil Twyford, is introducing legislation requiring a referendum before any publicly owned community assets are sold. But, oddly, only when Auckland assets are at risk.

Well precisely. But Rudman goes further.

Perhaps I’ve been snoozing of late, but the only Aucklanders I’m aware of who worry themselves to sleep about such things are professionals hand-wringers like intrepid water rights campaigner Penny Bright and a few old-style lefties who keep Roger Douglas voodoo dolls on their mantelpieces to remind them of the bad old days.

Heh, Rudman is clearly going to get bombarded with those angry italicised and bolded emails with every ‘S’ turned into ‘$’ from Mad Penny. Could be worse he could get the angry little unwashed man who reckons he hasn’t paid rates for 10 years screaming in his face what a c**t he is and how given half a chance he’d bash him. The same little smelly loser who probably rents given his thread-bare clothing didn’t take up my offer to give it a go and see how he gets on.

Rudman then points out some inconvenient facts for the rent-an-outrage mob;

I know it won’t reassure the worry-warts, but four years ago the tide actually turned when publicly owned Auckland Regional Holdings, headed by Act supporter Judith Bassett, bought the 20 per cent of Ports of Auckland shares in private hands, returning the port company to full public ownership. A few weeks ago, when port company chairman Gary Judd refloated the idea of privatisation, he was unceremoniously sacked. Even more recently, the right-dominated Auckland City Council endorsed a 10-year city plan with a commitment not to sell its airport shares.

Despite this, some are still convinced that the Super City revolution is just a smokescreen, covering up a dastardly grand plan to privatise the remaining community-owned assets. The grand-daddy of the conspiracies is that Mark Ford, former chief executive of publicly owned bulk water supplier Watercare and now chairman of the Auckland Transition Authority, is a tool of the forces of evil, integrating Watercare and the local retail water companies into one, in preparation for handing Auckland’s water system over to a private international water mogul.

Even Rudman sees through the mad emails and letters that keep arriving about Mark Ford.

Mr Twyford’s bill will also outlaw the sale of parks, swimming pools, libraries, halls and public housing without referendum support.

The bill seems fuelled by the more extreme planks of the Act Party’s election manifesto restricting local government to “core” business. Act leader Rodney Hide is the Minister of Local Government but he’s a minister outside Cabinet, with little real sway. All he has is his toothless ideological bark. The left, instead of wetting themselves every time he yapped, would be smarter to pat him on the head, and walk on.

OMG! Did Rudman just tell the left to stop wetting their pants and to pat Rodney on the head….he did. Wise advice.

Referendums are expensive, and easily manipulated. In his Super City poll, what question is Mr Goff proposing? How do you decide such crucial details as the powers of the local boards by referendum? The issue of asset sales is slightly more complicated than a simple yes or no.

Precisely. It is simply ridiculous to even suggest it yet that is what Phil Goff increasingly sounds like as each day passes. Ridiculous.

Back in 2007, I saw nothing wrong with selling Auckland City’s 12.75 per cent of airport shares, as long as the cash was spent on new infrastructure, something like the restoration of the St James Theatre, or repairs to the Aotea underground carpark. But I backed full public ownership of the port because I saw that as a way of ensuring future waterfront developments would be done for the good of all Aucklanders.

It’s impossible to reflect these kinds of nuances in a referendum. What we need to concentrate on is creating a truly democratic, ward-based model of governance, in which every Aucklander feels represented. That way the perception that referendums were a good thing would fade away.

Finally Rudman comes clean. I can’t find too much to find fault with that article. One of Rudman’s finest. Pity the left wing will now card him as a Tory Turncoat.

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide is selling his local authority reform plans on the basis of keeping rates down and having more transparency and accountability in local government. While he gets a tick from some people for his proposal to cap rate increases at the rate of inflation (as opposed to 8 per cent hikes nationwide last year), others are concerned at Hide’s self-appointed redefinition of core council services.

According to the minister, transport, water services and rubbish are in; libraries, parks and the preservation of heritage are out.

Rodney is doing a good job on this and noone has recently directly asked the rate-payers of NZ if they want a bunch of minor league politicians pissing away our money on halfwit projects like art galleries, social services and other projects for the self aggrandisement of the liberal elite. That includes Rudman’s pet project the theatre, if there was a market for a theatre someone would pay for it, but there isnt so Auckland doesn’t have a theatre.

Last time there was a defacto referendum on rates was the Auckland City Council election in 2007, and the ratepayers of Auckland replaced the wasteful, looney left that frittered away millions with a great mayor and a very solid council that have halted the silly rates rises to pay for the monuments to the liberal elites stupidity.

Carry on Rodney, carry on and apply the medicine to the rest of the country.

Check out the angry drivel from Andwew Willyumsh – it’s just personal vitriol against Hide.

Note to Rodney Hide – you can use Section Section 254, 255 and 256 of the Local Government Act to do something about this. I would refer Minister Hide to 254 (2) C – there is a significant and identifiable deficiency in the management or decision-making processes of the local authority.

That is, sack the angry clown of campbell’s bay if he does anything obstructive towards the government, and put in a commissioner to run the North Shore until the new council comes into effect.

Memo to the clown – you should rename re-election bid from “Don’t waste the rates” to “Don’t drink the rates”.

When you can’t tell the difference between the comments of the North Shore Mayor and the whacked out protestor Penny Bright, there’s a real problem. Here’s a sample:

“It is very clear that Rodney Hide continues to peddle lies and incorrect exaggerations in an attempt to support his ultra right wing ACT Party aspirations to get rid of local government in New Zealand and privatise our water, wastewater, transport, ports, airports, and anything else he can palm off to his Epsom and Remuera business mates. This is the biggest single case of grand larceny ever experienced in New Zealand’s history with $28 billion of public assets being swallowed into this Super Council, only to then be subject to a carve up and privatisation by the Rodney Hide brigade. Aucklanders and New Zealanders need to wake up to this “white collar theft” being enacted by the Minister of Local Government and put a halt to it now.”

The “man” is a disgrace. If there was ever a reason needed other than the obvious for the Super City then it would be Andrew Williams.